YenTra > YenTra's Quotes

“Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Without God all things are permitted.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Beauty will save the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“This pleasure came precisely from being too clearly aware of your own degradation; from the feeling of having gone to the uttermost limits; that it is was vile, bit it could not have been otherwise; that you could not escape, you could never make yourself into a different person”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground & The Double

“I couldn't even conceive of playing a secondary part...Either a hero, or dirt, there was nothing in between. That was my undoing”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground & The Double

“Although I committed this cruelty deliberately, it came from my wicked head, not from my heart. It was so artificial, so intellectual, so contrived, so bookish.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground & The Double

“This pleasure came precisely from being too clearly aware of your own degradation; from the feeling of having gone to the uttermost limits; that it is was vile, but it could not have been otherwise; that you could not escape, you could never make yourself into a different person”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground & The Double